One of Handel’s many legacies is splendid vocal writing originally intended to impress the Italians of the early 18th-century by meeting them on equal terms in their own country.

He, a young Protestant, was courageous and self-confident enough to write for the Catholic liturgy, and they were more than happy to acknowledge his gifts.

They must have been bowled over by his Dixit Dominus, a setting of Psalm 110, which the Gwent Bach Society rattled off with its customary aptitude and high achievement at this autumn concert, well-attended as usual.

For the first time, it employed as an accompanying orchestra The Musical and Amicable Society, a period-instrument group founded three years after Handel’s death and revived just five years ago.

Its Baroque authenticity was so fitting the choir’s music director and conductor, Roger Langford, was moved to interrupt the applause at the end to commend its performance, which included a fine version of J S Bach’s Suite for Orchestra No 3 in D.

With the choir ably negotiating some of Handel’s trickier episodes, it was left to soloists Gemma Busfield, Amy Wood, Philip Jones, Peter Wilman and Matthew Hargreaves to supply the unalloyed gilding in this and in Bach’s Magnificat.

Mr Langford clearly understood that both choral works are alike in their concentration and demands, a pair almost, not least in beginning and ending with equal affirmation after sailing around the solo singers’ islets of pure joy.

Comparisons were unfair on such an occasion but the progress of counter-tenor Philip Jones will surely be worth monitoring.